Aaron Harris

Aaron is a Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Tutorspree, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2011. Before Tutorspree he worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he managed product and operations for an analytics group. He has an AB in History and Literature from Harvard.

We launched a Series A program 6 months ago, but we started prototyping the program 6 months before that with a few companies. In that year, we’ve learned a huge amount about what works and what doesn’t work when raising an A. We’re now ready to launch the next phase of the program: working with companies that are ready for a Series A in batches, just like regular YC.

One of the hardest questions to answer when considering an A is “when is my company ready?” I’ve been returning to this problem nearly every day since we started the Series A program and I’ve started to build a framework for how to solve it.

In running our Series A program, we uncovered a way to materially influence the leverage a founder has in any round: process. Process is important because it gives founders the best opportunity to create a market for startups that favors the founders in the most important aspect of raising money: getting the right investor.

I’ve written about pitching before, and realized that what we were missing is a clear template of how founders should lay out their story through slides. This deck is a template for how I think companies should build seed decks.

There are few things more dangerous to startups than Big Deals. Founders lie to themselves by believing that catching a single Big Deal will automatically create a huge company. I’ve seen this belief kill a large number of startups.

When we launched our Series A program a few months ago, we decided that what we learn along the way shouldn’t just be kept inside of YC. We’re going to publish tools and learnings from the program that should help every company create better outcomes. This is the first tool. It’s simple, but effective.

Some of the biggest technology companies look like toys in the beginning. From a classical business building perspective, this shouldn’t happen. Toys are for fun. Businesses, especially huge ones, are for making money. Toys are small and of limited use. Large companies contain multitudes and perform a huge array of functions.